Trapping, cooling, and photodissociation analysis of state-selected H$\_2^{+}$ ions produced by (3+1) multiphoton ionization

Abstract

We report on the production of cold, state-selected H${}_2^{+}$ molecular ions in a linear RF trap. The ions are produced by (3+1) resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionisation (REMPI) of H${}_2$, and sympathetically cooled by laser-cooled Be${}^{+}$ ions. After demonstrating and characterizing the REMPI process, we use photodissociation by a deep UV laser at 213~nm to verify the high vibrational purity of the produced H${}_2^{+}$ ion samples. Moreover, the large difference between the photodissociation efficiencies of ions created in the $v=0$ and $v=1$ levels provides a way to detect a $v=0\to 1$ transition. These results pave the way towards high-resolution vibrational spectroscopy of H${}_2^{+}$ for fundamental metrology applications.

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• High-precision measurement of the atomic mass of the electron
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• Reversing Hydride Ion Formation in Quantum Information Experiments with Be${}^{+}$
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Cited by in corpus (2)

• Improved Ionization and Dissociation Energies of the Deuterium Molecule
• Ro-vibrational spin-averaged transitions in the hydrogen molecular ions